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Church Leadership

Fewer people are attending church these days, and the reason is not what you think.

The Pew Research Center dropped a bombshell yesterday. The center for the study of religion in American life released a new study based on a survey of 35,000 Americans, which finds that Christians have declined sharply as a share of the population while the number of religiously unaffiliated and other faiths have continued to grow.

Though some see good news in the study for Evangelicalism, I strongly disagree. Though historically evangelical denominations may have gained about 2 million members, that gain was purely from “religious switching.” Evangelicals as a percentage of the US population declined by about 1 percent. There is no positive spin on the decline of Christianity in America.

The Pew research mirrors other data on the decline of church attendance, so it’s not really news. Still, it begs the question: Why don’t people go to church?

Consumer behavior among church attendees results from a value-driven approach to ministry based on a corporate model for the church. This mistaken ideology is the central problem in North American Christianity.

Church is now a commodity rather than a community, and members increasingly approach worship with a consumer mind-set. That should be self-evident to any church leader, but it’s easy enough to substantiate.

Consider these actual statements heard from church members and visitors—

The Hoosier State is at the center of a national controversy because of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which Gov. Mike Pence signed into law this week.

In part, the law provides that the government may not substantially burden a person’s right to practice their religion unless it is essential for a compelling governmental interest and is the least restrictive way of doing so.

It’s billed as a protection of religious freedom, and as a Hoosier and a pastor, I’m all for that.

But this law isn’t so much about religious freedom as about something that has become a symbol for the latest battle in our culture war—wedding cake.

A clock is something you can take apart, analyze, clean, improve, and put back together. If it works properly, it will produce the same result every time.

A cloud exists all around you, perceptible but intangible, ethereal yet powerful. It produces a different effect on nearly every person nearly every time they encounter it.

For decades we’ve treated the church as if it were a clock when it’s really a cloud. The result is a mechanized religion that defines spirituality in terms of voting records and a church that is more commodity than community, a product to be consumed.

Readership of this blog grew dramatically in 2014. Overall traffic rose by more than 250 percent, and the number of unique readers climbed by more than 80 percent. Hopefully, that’s an indication that the posts are helpful and meaningful to a growing number of folk.

Through the year I learned a couple of lessons about blogging. But my greatest insights are about the state of the church.

Here are my top 10 posts for 2014 and what I’ve learned from your responses.

Generation labeling makes the church narrow its vision for spiritual transformation. But people aren’t just one thing. They can change.

I resisted seeing the movie Divergent at its release earlier this year because it looked to be a knock-off of The Hunger Games. Amazon Prime made it too easy to change my mind though, and I’m glad I did.

This story gets at an important truth we, especially Christians, need right now.